Richard Dawkins Proved Wrong: Half Hour News Hour Canceled

You're Not From Around Here, Are You? Brainy egghead types say we came from flying space rocks. Or, more succinctly: "The researchers calculate the odds of life starting on Earth rather than inside a comet at one trillion trillion (10 to the power of 24) to one against." more inside

The downside of diversity. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Angkor was a city ahead of its time. "The technology for harvesting water that enabled the Khmer to thrive also led to their fall, researchers say." [BugMeNot.] more inside